Another AAO update went live last night! It mainly focuses on fixing two rather annoying bugs that appeared after the last update, though we did slip in one minor, experimental change, because apparently, not everybody gets as excited about bugfixes as I do.

The changes in detail:

New features:

Added smooth scrolling control to the place minieditor in the editor. (ThePasch)

Bugfixes:

Fixed a bug causing pauses when a character’s sprite was updated. (Enthalpy)

Fixed a bug disabling saves from loading when a character was on-screen at time of saving. (Enthalpy)

Fixed a bug making saves reload the player (Enthalpy)

Please let us know what you think of adding smooth scroll to the place minieditor - is it helpful? Disruptive? Takes up too much space? Speeds up your process? We added it thinking that it will make scripting court scenes faster, but we're eager to hear from the users before deciding whether it's here to stay or not!

Development is still active, and more cool stuff is sure to be on the way (if everything goes well)! As always, you can stay updated on what's happening in AAO development on the project's Bitbucket page, and if you'd like to join development efforts, check out the Developer's Corner for all the resources you'll need to get started.

[D]isordered speech is not so much injury to the lips that give it forth, as to the disproportion and incoherence of things in themselves, so negligently expressed. ~ Ben Jonson

Enthalpy wrote:Please let us know what you think of adding smooth scroll to the place minieditor - is it helpful? Disruptive? Takes up too much space? Speeds up your process? We added it thinking that it will make scripting court scenes faster, but we're eager to hear from the users before deciding whether it's here to stay or not!

I haven't used it yet and would be surprised if I ever do. The same goes for the "Screen Position" dropdown that has always been there. Speaking for myself, the most important part of the scene editor by far is character poses, which cannot be changed via the mini-editor.

If I wanted to go from a shot of the defense's bench to a shot of the prosecution's bench then I start by asking what pose the prosecutor should be in to best reflect the dialogue. Whether or not scrolling is appropriate for that transition is the last thing I consider. So, in the end, IF I'm transitioning between shots and I'm NOT changing the pose of the focus character AND I decide that I want a transition, then the scroll option in the mini-editor would save me a half-second. If not (which is the case 90% of the time), then I end up going into the full scene editor anyway.

IMO, the ideal addition to the mini-editor would be the ability to change the pose of the speaking character. Without that function, the mini-editor itself is mostly useless. There are times when I remember to use it to select a one-off background like solid black, but most of the time I click on the full scene editor by habit. If the mini-editor instead had something like Place, Character Pose, and Talking Animation Mode, I could reasonably not have to use the full scene editor in most cases. And that would go for non-trial segments, too.

Enthalpy wrote:Please let us know what you think of adding smooth scroll to the place minieditor - is it helpful? Disruptive? Takes up too much space? Speeds up your process? We added it thinking that it will make scripting court scenes faster, but we're eager to hear from the users before deciding whether it's here to stay or not!

I haven't used it yet and would be surprised if I ever do. The same goes for the "Screen Position" dropdown that has always been there. Speaking for myself, the most important part of the scene editor by far is character poses, which cannot be changed via the mini-editor.

If I wanted to go from a shot of the defense's bench to a shot of the prosecution's bench then I start by asking what pose the prosecutor should be in to best reflect the dialogue. Whether or not scrolling is appropriate for that transition is the last thing I consider. So, in the end, IF I'm transitioning between shots and I'm NOT changing the pose of the focus character AND I decide that I want a transition, then the scroll option in the mini-editor would save me a half-second. If not (which is the case 90% of the time), then I end up going into the full scene editor anyway.

IMO, the ideal addition to the mini-editor would be the ability to change the pose of the speaking character. Without that function, the mini-editor itself is mostly useless. There are times when I remember to use it to select a one-off background like solid black, but most of the time I click on the full scene editor by habit. If the mini-editor instead had something like Place, Character Pose, and Talking Animation Mode, I could reasonably not have to use the full scene editor in most cases. And that would go for non-trial segments, too.

What an awesome feedback. I was thinking this exact thing many times! I personally like the smooth-scrolling option on the minieditor, but I would also like to see many other functions added on it as well. I think being able to make trials and games and just being able to express yourself with the case creator is the core of Ace Attorney Online and the developers have done a very good job of bringing that (so thankful every day for this website) ...so now maybe taking the next step is finding out how to make that experience as expedient as possible, since its no secret making these games can take a pretty long time. Your suggestion about the minieditor would save me LOTS of time when creating trials, without a doubt, so I commend you for writing that post.

It's true that when there is only a single character, it would be nice and quite simple to add the character sprite selection in the minieditor, that would probably make it a lot more useful. Enthalpy, maybe you can create a ticket for that in the issue tracker on bitbucket ?(of course, when composing a scene with several characters, you would still have to open the full editor, though)

Unas wrote:It's true that when there is only a single character, it would be nice and quite simple to add the character sprite selection in the minieditor, that would probably make it a lot more useful. Enthalpy, maybe you can create a ticket for that in the issue tracker on bitbucket ?(of course, when composing a scene with several characters, you would still have to open the full editor, though)

When you say "a single character," does that exclude the typical courtroom scene that is 2-3 sprites arranged on a single background? I don't imagine that the mini-editor could be used to create a scene with multiple characters in it - and I wouldn't expect it to be able to - but in order to be truly helpful, I would think it would need to be able to edit simple courtroom scenes. I imagine it would work best if the mini-editor referenced which character is speaking that frame to determine what set of poses to include in the dropdown menu. I say this, of course, knowing next to nothing about programming or knowing if I interpreted your response correctly, so...

¿Acid Rain? wrote:When you say "a single character," does that exclude the typical courtroom scene that is 2-3 sprites arranged on a single background? I don't imagine that the mini-editor could be used to create a scene with multiple characters in it - and I wouldn't expect it to be able to - but in order to be truly helpful, I would think it would need to be able to edit simple courtroom scenes. I imagine it would work best if the mini-editor referenced which character is speaking that frame to determine what set of poses to include in the dropdown menu. I say this, of course, knowing next to nothing about programming or knowing if I interpreted your response correctly, so...

In principle, there's nothing that would speak directly against that. One would have to consider what would happen in certain edge cases - that is, what if no character is selected to speak? What does the minieditor show then? What if the character that's been selected to speak is not on screen? What if the character selected to speak is on screen, but in a different screen position than the one we're currently focusing on?

There's probably answers to all those questions, but we definitely would need to discuss them first before we can take a stab at an implementation.